Smokey Mountain Breakdown

They are like some Dickensian nightmare that seems to crawl from under the modern Christmas Present’s robes during and after times of great tragedy. Actually they are always there. You see them rearing their petty noggins from time to time, but they like to snatch them back inside their shell once they realize how hideously ugly they are.

It would be so much easier if they were accompanied by clanking chains and the moans of the damned. I have a feeling that comes later for them.

I know we all are capable of being one of them. When I was in eighth grade, I remember the moment that made me their kin.

She was incredibly popular and pretty in a Mormon way. Big pretty teeth in a constant beauty pageant smile. She was just smart enough for people to like her but not freakishly smart. That was me. Freakishly smart and trying so hard to hide it.

I hated her. I think her name was Tammy. She grated on my nerves to the point that I could barely stand to be around her.

“Haaaa-ay!” She could turn ‘hey’ into two syllables. Chirpy, Chirpety, Chirp, Chirp.

My dislike for Tammy went beyond mere envy. It was a fury at the world that valued people like her and despised people like me. It was a rage at her on a cellular level, yet not at her, but at what she was. It was an archetypal racism. It’s the hate they talk about when they talk about “hate crimes”. It’s unspeakably ugly. Ugly as sin.

We were both attending a beach party on the Island. She came up to me with a sad look on her face and asked, “Why do you hate me so much?”

I was shocked because she noticed.

I broke down in tears and could not answer. My silence witnessed my epiphany. She walked away without realizing the change she had wrought in me by showing me my hatred.

I’ve come to understand that my epiphany hasn’t arrived for a fair portion of the population of earth. Most people are perfectly happy hating without rhyme or reason. Most people like to wallow in their hate and enjoy aiming it toward curious and inappropriate places.

I reserve my hatred for the government. They are largely deserving and I figure, they can take it. The pompous and hubris-ridden are fun to make fun of.

You’d think that philanthropic endeavors would be free of such vitriol. How can anyone hate you for feeding the hungry or clothing the naked or helping little puppy dogs? But not-for-profits seem to be almost as good a target for hate as pretty cheerleaders and stupid, evil political regimes.

Hurricane Katrina had barely cleared Mississippi before the rumblings began denigrating the Red Cross. The Internet is full of anti-Red Cross sentiment, some of it quite ugly. I heard a nasty Internet tirade the other day that went off on the Red Cross largely because the writer of this piece of idiocy thought the Red Cross charged WWII soldiers for cigarettes.

In humane circles, the big target is the HSUS. I can’t claim to agree with everything that comes out of there, but the sheer range of crazy opposition to the HSUS is pretty impressive. They have apparently pissed off everyone at some point or another. So you get cock fighters and puppy-millers screaming at them for being crazy animal rightists. Then you have all of the crazy animal rightists sneering at them for being toadies of the government. I am being stalked right now for including their url in a list of charities to consider for donations.

Even my little tiny corner of philanthropy is under attack. I honestly can’t find much these days to recommend about the rescue community, even in my little corner of fearless defenders of cocker spaniels. A rival group of cocker spaniel rescuers became insanely jealous of my little group’s fundraising success for Noah’s Wish and began pelting us with sour grapes. It’s actually fairly hilarious if it weren’t so vicious. I think I need to write a book about it.

Even when we were setting up the little fundraiser for Noah’s Wish, some slime mold came out of the woodwork and began defaming the founder of that organization. It very nearly pulled us off track. But it became obvious that this person was trying to appropriate our fundraiser for her own charity.

Part of the problem of moving the responsibility of news gathering to the Internet is that there are no ethics on the Internet. No control for slander or character defamation. And most of the people on the Internet really do believe everything they read there, particularly if it is nasty, gossipy or slanderous. It’s the price we pay for living in a “dumbed down” society.

But in the end, those telling the tales and badmouthing charities end up looking bad. You might as well beat yourself to death with an ugly stick. Picking on people who are just trying to alleviate a bad situation just makes you look petty. And sure, you will have people who will flock to you because of your ranting. They are more than likely to be people who feed off of pettiness.

Tammy, I imagine in my mind, lives in a perfectly ordered Junior League life as the successful wife of some lawyer or doctor. She has a perfect family with a gaggle of beautiful children with perfect teeth. I need to believe in her perfection. I need her to be that happy chirpy adult. I need her to be my reminder that just because there is an anti-me out there, that the world is big enough for both of us. I need to believe that her ability to marry well has served a purpose to the greater good. And I’m sure that it has.

We are a complex species. Each of us equally capable of both transcendental kindness and unspeakable depravity. Perhaps we do know better how charity dollars should be spent. Perhaps we would do a better job. If we honestly believe this, we should go out and use our powers for good. Not beat up on The United Way or The Red Cross or the HSUS.

Unless you are beating up on Reverend Benny Hinn. Now that guy is open season 24-7.

My talent for melding into cultures different from own has led me into some interesting situations. The axiom I try to follow is, "Keep your mouth shut and your ears open and you might just learn something. "

A year ago, I remember making the same monthly trip into the small feed and seed where I purchase my dog food that I make each month. I like this little feed store because it is full of local color and is run by South Carolinians. I hear stories here I don’t hear anywhere else.

As I enter the front door, I always stop and read the bulletin board. The usual fare includes ads for hay, both square and royal bales, horses, pit bull puppies, farriers, guineas and game chickens. Indeed, much of the store is dedicated to the last item. Cocke County is famous for its game chicken breeders and illegal chicken fights. You can find all sorts of stuff here; special feed mixtures, special gunpowder to feed your cocks, special medications, muffs and things I have no idea what they are used for.

The folks who run the store have always been great source of information for me concerning my chickens. My chickens are fat, placid standards. As far removed from the brilliantly colored game chickens as a draft horse is removed from a Mongolian Steppes pony. Still, they get the same ailments and suffer from the same chicken problems. And if there is anything moving through the area that will impact chickens…these people will know about it. They keep healthier and cleaner flocks than any of the commercial or hobby breeders.

Indeed, I quite admire the chicken people. I agree with them up to the point where they throw those gorgeous birds into the ring to fight one another. The chicken people seem to like me as well. We are united by our disdain for the animal rights movement. I think they are a bit misinformed about this. I don’t think they understand that I’m very involved with animal welfare and don’t see the HSUS as the “great Satan” that they do. My disdain for the animal rights people is much different from theirs. This is just one area that I would consider myself in a “strange bedfellow” situation.

A year ago, I waded through a handful of cherried-out pick-up trucks with “Blood and Feathers” mud flaps and Bush/Cheney bumper stickers to pick up my dog food. I would have loved to have a Kerry/Edwards sticker on my jeep. Hell, I would have loved to have Kerry/Edwards signs all over my property. But I was soundly warned not to do such a thing. I was told out right that my property would be vandalized if I showed support for my Democratic candidates. Driving around this oddly traditional Republican stronghold dating back to the Civil War, the only places you could see Kerry/Edwards signs were on vacant stretches of woodland. I didn’t see one sign in anyone’s yard. If you are pushing toward a single party system, fear seems to be the best motivator.

So I didn’t flaunt it. I’m a poor person and can’t afford to replace my vehicle or have my home rebuilt after arson. I felt a certain quiet hopefulness though. It hardly seemed possible that George Bush could get re-elected after his lying ways had been revealed. Because lying is a sin and surely his thickly born-again Christian base would realize that. Wouldn’t they? I felt hopeful because I knew that Dems were getting the vote out in record numbers. Even as I was passing through the phalanx of RNP supporters stationed solidly within 25 feet of my polling place, I felt hopeful. I even grinned and said to them, “No thanks, I’m a Yella Dawg!”

So, I was understandably dumbfounded when GWB won. Evidently so were a lot of people. There are still rumblings involving Diebold’s involvement. Most recently a whistleblower came forward to reveal a remote back door to the Diebold’s software. Jimmy Carter, who supervises elections in third world countries, cannot say that our elections are fair. In our heart of hearts…we know George is an imposter. We just don’t know what to do about it but wait.

So my recent dog food buying expedition ended up being much different. Prominently displayed on the back wall were T-shirts for sale that said, “I SURVIVED 6-11”. They refer to the June federal raid on a Del Rio cockfighting ring. The feds brought to bear their full resources, the Patriot Act and 400,000 taxpayer dollars to net 150 people on misdemeanor charges. They’ve spent the summer kicking in the doors of various small town sheriffs, Boss Hogs, deputies and other local officials. They’ve gone through courthouse records in great detail. The Feds are obviously looking for something. They don’t appear to have found it yet…whatever it is.

The chicken people have really taken all this very personally and are fighting it tooth and nail. They blame George W. Bush and the HSUS. I found myself in the singular position of hearing a well-phrased rant regarding the importance of separating leadership from personable foibles. They praised Bill Clinton to the heavens; because they knew Bill would have had more important things to do than harass a bunch of chicken people at taxpayer’s expense. They are very clear now that the drunk guy who’s the life of the pig pickin’ ain’t necessarily cut out to lead the free world.

Indeed, finally, after Hurricane Katrina, I seem to have strange bedfellows all about. They are like people waking up from a long, long sleep. I think the conversions have more to do with the Federal governments application of the Patriot act here in East Tennessee. It smacks of the old “revenuer” type of action that these people have such a long history with. Evidently, these types of actions are occurring all over the country in small rural communities and counties. I wish I knew why the Feds were cleaning house in these small rural enclaves known for cheap property taxes and slow economic growth. But people are finally experiencing what the loss of civil liberties means to them personally.

They still want “God” back in government, but they want George W. Bush out of there. I don’t know that they will become Democrats. I doubt they’ll ever be able to vote past their narrow self-interests and single-issue politics. They may continue to be easily swayed be slick ideologues with hot button talking points. But they are going to be looking more closely at what a candidate’s history is…and realize that “less government” pretty much means lots more government at the end of the day.

Tennessee is my second home, the home of my adulthood. I grew up, as did all of my family going back several generations, on the South Carolina and Georgia Sea Islands.



The 1893 Sea Islands Hurricane

As we witness the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina and watch, with horror and fascination as Hurricane Rita churns her monstrous way toward Texas, it is easy to think, "Surely we have not seen the like of these storms before."

I've been wanting to write about the Sea Islands Hurricane since Katrina struck. Partly because I was honored to hear a first hand account when I was a youngster from an ancient black man who was my nanny's father. Joe Kinlaw was 98 when I saw his milky cataract-veiled eyes well up with tears at the recollection. I sat on the old heart pine blanket chest in his two room block house and heard a tale of unbelievable destruction. Bodies buried in shallow graves, flood, disease and the unbelievable stench of rotting corpses of animals and people.

Joe didn't have an inch of dark black skin that wasn't creased from a lifetime of tilling his crops with his mule on his Buck Island farm. He was a slight man, bent from a lifetime of broken promises. But he was strangely happy given all he had seen in his life and had the funny chortling laugh that Katie had...the laugh I inherited from the black woman who raised me practically from birth.

The Sea Island Hurricane struck August 27th, 1893, bearing down upon Savannah, Georgia and affecting the entire stretch of coastline on either side. It is hard to guage how many actually died but it is placed between 1000 and 3000, mostly the poor black population. Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross who supervised the 10 month long relief effort, placed those numbers much higher. 30,000 were left homeless and starving, their crops ruined and the farm land salted by the storm surge.

The Sea Island Hurricane, like Katrina, chose its victims from the poor disenfranchised people of the coast. Like Katrina, accounts reflect that they had at least three days warning of the storm, but those who could not afford to flee inland were the ones who paid the ultimate price. Like Katrina, The Sea Island storm was followed by another terrible storm, The 1893 Charleston Hurricane. The US government did nothing to assist in the relief efforts in 1893. Over 100 years later, with all the benefits of our technology, we could not get our most vulnerable citizens out of the way of a killer storm. So much for "Lessons Learned". How many lessons do we need?

In 1894, Scribner's Magazine ran a long article about the storm and the relief effort. It tells the story much better than I could, but keep in mind the period when reading it. Attitudes toward blacks of the era are reflected in the writing.

Scribners Article

Here are some excerpts:

"Two thousand persons, the great majority of them Negroes, were drowned or killed on the night of the storm. The others died from exposure, from a lack of food, or from the malarial fever that was epidemic on the islands during the hot September days that succeeded the disturbance."

"One peculiarity of this storm was that the aged, the very young, and the infirm were all killed. The survivors were young men in the vigor of manhood. Very few were seriously wounded, and hundreds were found without a bruise on their bodies. They were killed by the sheer pressure and fury of the wind. In the settlements where the storm was worst, not a single child survived, and very few women."

"Fortunately for the survivors, they were in reach of immediate aid. They lived near New Orleans, one of the richest and most charitable communities in the country, a community in which the organization of benevolence has reached the highest point of efficiency. Relief was instantly forthcoming; there was not a moments delay."

"One moment she had five children clinging to her, in another moment there were only two. The angry winds and the hungry waters had torn them from her and swept them out of hearing before they could utter a cry. But what this wom an said did not run in the direction of grief. 'I glad to God I got two lil' one lef'.'"

"It is estimated - and the estimate is not in the nature of a rough guess - that two thousand five hundred lives were lost in the islands and on the adjacent coast. The truth would not be missed very far if the number were placed at three thousand. Not all of those were lost in the storm. Two thousand persons, the great majority of them Negroes, were drowned or killed on the night of the storm. The others died from exposure, from a lack of food, or from the malarial fever that was epidemic on the islands during the hot September days that succeeded the disturbance."

"As a matter of fact, the Red Cross Society as I saw it at Beaufort is something entirely different from any other relief organization that has come under my observation. Its strongest and most admirable feature is its extreme simplicity. The perfection of its machinery is shown by the apparent absence of all machinery. There are no exhibitions of self-importance. There is no display -no torturous cross-examination of applicants - no needless delay. And yet nothing is done blindly, or hastily, or indifferently."

Perhaps my knowlege of this 1893 storm colored my reactions to Katrina. Knowing that New Orleans came to the aid of my homeland so swiftly when we were decimated made me want to help even more keenly. Our memories are long here in the South. Our gratitude reaches across the centuries.

I know, as surely as I know anything, that happiness, music and humid summer breezes dancing in spanish moss will return to New Orleans...just as they returned to Beaufort and Savannah. And God Bless the Red Cross for being there then...and being there now.

Other Sea Island Hurricane and Red Cross Links:

American Red Cross Museum: African Americans in the American Red Cross

Her baby had died and she was glad.

Not that Margaret Workman didn't love her son. But his death in July meant that he wasn't with the family at Tybee Island a month later on Aug. 27, 1893

Reading of Maggie Workman's letter about the storm

An Interview with Clara Barton about the Sea Islands Hurricane

The box office of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Kalita Humphries Theater in Dallas is shaped like a coffin. I was there working during Adrian Hall’s reign during the 80’s when it happened. It’s fair to say that Adrian didn’t care for me, often referring to me as “that woman”. So I spent my years of employment there doing the not so creative work of box office and house management. This was okay with me at the time. I had burned myself up like a white goat on the altar of Los Angeles and spilled all my creative blood so that I had nothing left to give. The Dallas Theater Center was a break I needed badly.

I consoled myself by remembering that the coffin shaped office was exactly where Preston Jones had penned A Texas Trilogy. If The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia had emerged from this hopeless place…perhaps I wasn’t completely washed up at 24. Maybe I could go on to do something wonderful like that.

And it was a good place for me then. A time and place of unbridled silliness where we giggled and “corpsed” each time Mrs. Polly Baumfalk came to exchange her tickets. (Could you spell that for me, please Ma’am?) I’d bleached my hair an absurd platinum color that, to my delight, seemed to absolve me of any expectations of intelligence.

In 1985 were doing a production of C. P. Taylor’s dark musical tragi-comedy Good. Good is set in 1930’s Germany and is the story of a basically decent “good” man, a professor, and how he ends up supervising the final solution at Auschwitz. It’s about how “good” people become encompassed and overtaken by evil. Slowly, seductively until in utter horror…it is too late to turn back. In 1985, the Holocaust was still a taboo topic. It was before the Shoah Project and Schindler’s List. It was like saying the word “cancer” in those days…also not a topic for polite conversation. People were still uncomfortable about what had happened to six million souls in Hitler’s death camps. We knew the play was going to be controversial. I just wasn’t prepared for the first and only complaint I handled.

She came in the big glass doors using a cane that seemed poorly suited to support the weight of an entire world. Her frailty seemed a symptom of more than her advanced age and when she spoke you heard the echoes of long dead happiness. She slowly advanced on the ticket window and pushed her season tickets through the window. Her hands were talons that grew sideways from crippling arthritis and were decorated with huge gold rings like jewels on bleached bones.

She grasped my hand when I reached for the tickets and asked, “Why?” Her rheumy eyes, filling with watery tears.

Stupidly I looked from her tickets to her face, not knowing what to say.

Frustrated, she released my hand and rolled her sleeve up. There, still visible, in the creases of her skin was a death camp tattoo.

“Why?” She asked again and grasped my hand, digging into my flesh.

I excused myself and joined her in the lobby. Still quiet, still searching for something I could say, and gently guided her to a seat and sat beside her.

I then said the only thing I could say.

“Because it is important that we, all of us, never forget this. It needs to be remembered.”

I knew when I said it that it was the right thing and the true thing, but I also knew that it was coming from a blonde bubble-headed gentile twenty-something and nothing that came out of my mouth was going to sound right. This grand old woman had more experience of cruelty and brutality and hatred than I would ever in my life imagine.

“Why?” She said again with a sob. “I can think of no good reason to remember such a thing. Such a ugly thing I’ve spent my life forgetting.”

I could not argue with her.

“You know, I there is nothing I can do to stop this play. What can I do for you?”

She seemed to tremble in her delicate, precarious unhappiness.

I called the general manager and we cut her comps for another show. I remember watching her leave the theater, still abjectly unhappy that this terrible thing was going to happen.

She was the first Holocaust survivor I ever met.

I hadn’t thought about my frail little Jewish lady in a long time. Lately, seeing the faces of these new survivors of an entirely different sort of cataclysm, she has haunted me. I doubt she lived long enough to see the efforts that have been made since to remember what happened to her and so many others. She was old beyond her many years even then.

I am tormented by my species’ inability to learn from past mistakes. We seem doomed to repeat history under different circumstances, never taking notice of the ominous similarities from situation to situation. We are like the friend who intentionally seeks out abusive relationships, one after another, each time thinking this time it will be different. All the while ignoring the fact that the new person is really the same person as before…just in a different skin.

I am a Cassandra. There are many of us and our numbers are growing.

Because it is important that we, all of us, never forget this. It needs to be remembered.

I was ten years old and putting my ballet slippers on in the cold, dank old jalopy of a building off Victory Drive in Savannah that served as a ballet school. I can still smell that mixture of kid leather, sweat, pine dust and nylon. Someone was boasting about their sister's recent debut.

"My sister's a movie star." I slyly said, looking up from my chubby legs stuffed uncomfortably into pink tights.

Another little girl, feeling left out from this preteen one-upsmanship blurted out, "Oh, yeah! Well MY sister is a majorette!"

I didn't know what to say. So I wisely said nothing. How do you compete with that?

I was recently looking for a bio of my sister. Not one of the awful B movie site ones, but one she'd written herself. I knew she had this excellent head shot out there for the real estate company she and her husband own and I thought there might be a bio as well. There wasn't. My sister remains adorably computer illiterate.

But I found this amazing little nugget on a blog called Velociworld. This guy, Kim Crawford, left this really wonderful blog entry about my sister and sideways, about my family.

---

October 28, 2003

SIMONE GRIFFETH

I haven't blogged about Simone in a long, long time, mostly because it's too painful. She's the first girl I ever fell in love with, and to this day she has no idea who the fuck I am. Life's funny like that.

Simone was born in Savannah, too, 3 days shy of being two years older than me. When I was a kid my parents had a river cottage on the May River in Bluffton, South Carolina, and we'd spend the summers there. Simone's family lived just down the road, on Myrtle Island, on the same river, but in a great huge brick 1920's southern mansion, with enormous live oaks that blocked the sun, dripping Spanish moss and somnolent decorum. They had a long gravel driveway that circled around a fountain in front of the house, the Sure Sign of Old Money to me. This was obviously their primary residence.

I first heard of Simone the summer of '71, when our next door neighbor told us who she was and where she lived. Simone was enjoying great notoriety for a sixteen year old, because she'd just starred in a low-budget flick called Swamp Girl, about a girl raised in the Okeefenokee Swamp with no contact with the outside world.

They call it stalking now; I called it innocent curiosity, and spent the better part of that summer pedaling around her house and Myrtle Island, desperately trying to catch a glimpse of Simone, even as the hired help chased my pimply fourteen-year-old ass out of their driveway for attempting to cut doughnuts in the gravel with a Kolkhoff ten-speed. The fourteen-year-old boy's equivalent of scratching the grass with his hind legs.

I'd often see Simone as she water-ski'd by our dock, blond hair slicked back, bikini aquiver (you know what I mean). There were usually one or two GQ-looking boys in the boat with her, all studly and such, but at least she had the decency to wave back to the skinny geek with big ears and big wood in his banlon nut hugger bathing suit.

Unrequited love. Man. Actually, unrequited acknowledgement of existence. But we stalkers never recognize that fact until it's too late.

Simone did a lot of B movies and TV work after that, but I don't think she did anything after the mid-eighties.

You want to know when she broke my heart? In 1975, when I was in college, and I saw her do a nude scene in Death Race 2000 with David Carradine. Because I felt betrayed? Hell, no. Because she'd seduced Grasshopper. Some things a man just can't forgive.

---

My mother would have slap eaten this up. Mom worked terribly hard to project the image of "Old Money"...though...honestly...we had nothing of the sort.

The house never had a fountain. You can check the images in my galleries on that one and deeming it a "mansion", well, it's very flattering but quite wrong. I do, totally, believe that Katie chased him out of our yard for doing donuts. That is just such a Katie sort of thing. I can hear her in my head yelling, "Whatcho doin'! Git!".

Thank you, Kim Crawford, for this lovely little memory of my family. In return, I'm trying to make my beautiful sister aware of your existence. We tried to figure it out last night, but you are right.

She doesn't have a clue who you are.

I'm not sure if they've called Mike Brown back to DC to fire him orgive him a medal. Everyone else who has screwed up in this administration has gotten some sort of honor or promotion.

And of course... every one pads their resume. I'm sure he didn't expect this to happen. I mean....Who'd a thunk it? But, Brownie does appear to padded his resume in a way that sort of crosses the line. The line between bullshit and pathological lying.

And it all comes down to accountability and the lack thereof in theadministration. If GWB was a real leader, heads would roll. But he's too interested in people liking him. And not the people who count.

Here ya go, Brownie. Here's the nation's safety from natural disasters. You deserve it for kissing my ass so good. "You're doing a heck of a job here, Brownie!"

Gormless Git. Ain't no cold cokes in hell.

---

How
Reliable is Mike Brown's Resume?

---

Mike Brown's Resume
from Findlaw



They had to take the Arabian Horse thing off today. I think they
are trying to expunge that part of Brownie's life for some reason.

---

Memorable Quotes from previous employers and people Brown claims to have worked for, et al...:



"I think I've told you that I'm into Arab horses. Well, for 3 years Michael Brown was hired and then fired by our IAHA, the International Arabian Horse Assoc. He was an unmitigated, total fucking disaster. I was shocked as hell when captain clueless put him in charge of FEMA a couple of years ago."



"He ruined IAHA financially so badly that we had to change the name and combine it with the Purebred registry.

I am telling you this after watching the fucking shipwreck in the Gulf. His incompetence is KILLING people."



"The assistant is more like an intern. Department heads did not report
to him."



"Yes. Mike Brown worked for me. He was my administrative assistant. He
was a student at Central State University. Mike used to handle a lot of
details. Every now and
again I'd ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was
always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt."
(anyone who's been trained to write coded negative letters of
recommendation will get a laugh out of the above.)



"He may have been an adjunct instructor, but that title is very
different from that of 'professor'."



As for the honor of "Outstanding Political Science Professor," Johnson
says, "I spoke with the department chair yesterday and he's not aware
of it."



"not a person that anyone here is familiar with."



"was never director here, was never on the board of directors, was
never executive director. He was never here in any capacity. I never
heard his name mentioned here."



"He did mainly transactional work, not litigation," says Jones. "There
was a feeling that he was not serious and somewhat shallow."

---

I keep finding more quotes about this idiot as I go.

We all know a Mike Brown. He's the guy at work who gets by kissing the bosses' ass while doing absolutely nothing. He's the idiot who keeps talking about "team work"when what he really means is "how can I get you to do my job for me?" He's the asshole that you've had to cover for for the past five years because no one can get rid of him because the boss thinks his crap doesn't stink. You know him!




The difference here is that even our most incompetant bosses usually know not to give this asshole any real or crucial responsibility. Mike can't help it that he's an idiot. The real responsibility and accountability lies with the numbnut who awarded him FEMA.




Guess the leadership at the Department of Complete Imbecility had already been farmed out.

In fairness to Marie Antoinette, she did not actually say, "Let them eat cake". It was Marie-Therese who said "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" some 100 years earlier. I'm sticking with the Marie Antoinette allusion since that is more commonly known. And brioche...while not cake...is still very yummy.


Perversely, people are defending this.  Just can't see this for the astoundingly insensitive and tasteless comment that it was.


This is the sort of thing that is out there. Name removed to protect the astoundingly insensitive.

---

"Do you honestly believe that any media person (other than a FOX employee) would give an accurate rendering of anything said by any member of the Bush family? Or any Republican, for that matter? PUHLEEZE!!!


I would bet what few $$ I have that Mrs. Bush's remarks were:

1.  Incorrectly quoted

2.  Taken completely out of context

3.  Deliberately reworded


I don't care what circumstance prompted this migration to other states -- it IS a hardship on the people who live in the communities where they go. It reduces housing availability and job availability. Many of those being transported were "homeless" before Katrina had her say. And now the government will "reward" them for being "victims".


Think about this a bit more dispassionately. And NEVER believe the liberal media when they "quote" the remarks of a Republican. Sound bites can be spliced. Audio can be edited. Spin is applied liberally (deliberate choice of words there). Don't sucker into it."

---

This is why I'm growing hateful towards Republicans. I'm fairly certain that these sentiments are nestling in all of their hearts like nasty little worms, whether they give voice to them or not. It's like racism. It's hideous when it's visible but you know even when it's not that it's still there.


I gave this person a link to the actual raw tape...that even FOX had to report on. I also gave her a piece of my fairly irate mind. She said I won the nasty contest by a country mile.


Guess I did.

Declaration of New Orleans
by Charles Montesquieu
Saturday, Sep. 03, 2005 at 3:24 AM
charliemontesquieu@yahoo.com

A Declaration of The People of the United States of America Concerning
the Present Crisis in the City of New Orleans.

In the name of the People of the United States of America, we declare:

That for the last four and a half years the President and his
administration have served the interests of a few wealthy citizens and
not the interests of the American People.

That he has acted with contempt for the People and for the Constitution
and the laws of the United States.

That an edict of the Supreme Court made him President in 2000 and fraud
made him President again in 2004.

That the President has pursued an unprecedented expansion of Executive
powers that are a grave threat to the rights and liberties of the
American People.

That he has made war on sovereign nations that are no threat to the
American People.

That his "War on Terror" has cost billions of dollars and thousands of
lives without bringing those responsible for the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001 to justice.

That the failure of his leadership in the present crisis in the City of
New Orleans has resulted in the deaths of thousands more.

That he is derelict in every duty of his office.

Therefore, we resolve:

That President George W. Bush and his administration are illegitimate.

That he should resign from office and new elections should be held
immediately.

That if he does not resign, the Congress of the United States should
act to remove him from office.

That if the Congress should fail to act, the People will exercise their
right to abolish this state and will establish a new government that
will better secure their rights and liberties.

COPY AND DISTRIBUTE


And by the way....

There ain't no cold cokes in hell.

The only person you have the ability to muzzle is yourself. Yes. I'm talking to you.

I will continue to be critical of George W. Bush who now surely has lost the largest number of civilian citizens to violent death under his rule as any president in our history. We don't need to have an inquiry...we need an indictment.

I will continue with my efforts to help my fellow Southerners, for whom I weep for daily. We have long, long memories down here, Mr. Bush. You will surely live forever in infamy. Not since Sherman have we seen the miserable likes of you.

You bastard. May you rot in hell.

If I hear him say the results are "not acceptable" while failing to step up and take responsibility for what is obviously his failing as a leader, I will surely spew chunks. George W. Bush is no more fit to lead a nation than my nanny goat is.

We have been so sorely injured as a nation by this man and his merry band of fascisti. Up to this point, I've merely had a shuddering horror and dislike of him, his administration and his policies. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I now realize that he is more than a dangerous, stupid madman. I no longer have to wonder what life must have been like for Romans under the rule of a Nero or a Caligula. I know. I watched this asshole fall apart while reading "My Pet Goat" to school children while the Twin Towers were hit. I've now observed him sit on his ass waiting for someone else to do something while hundreds perished and are still dying in New Orleans. The thought of this monster walking about stealing air while people are drowning like rats in their attics dismays me. It's just not right. He should be made to pay.

The fact that he fails to take responsibility for his gross incompetence yet again...well, I'm not surprised. I just wish there were some way we could get rid of him now and not have to risk another three years of his inept bumbling, global faux pas' and waste of life.

My apologies to any serious practitioners of Voudon...my reference to Samedi is because Bush now must be as well acquainted with the realm of death as the good Baron, having brought so very many over to that side. No offense was intended.

I find myself thinking that the poor, black population of New Orleans is the one disadvantaged population I would not like pissed off at me. I think we may see mass produced GWB voodoo dolls in the very near future. I'll take two!

Rosie's Cocker Rescue Referral
http://www.petfinder.com/shelters/TN327.html

Rosie's Cocker Rescue Referral

Old Maid's Aerie Farm and Jammery

Stock up for the holidays now with these lovely hand-made jellies, jams and preserves. These are completely natural "wild" food ingredients. There are limited supplies so please get your orders in soon. Once they are gone...they are gone. Please check this page for updates and availability. Will be shipping until supplies run out.